We buried a neighbor's cat today, found his crumpled body across the street.  Mike dug a hole under the apricot tree, one of the few places there is enough soil over the famous Mentone rocks to dig more than a foot deep.  I rolled the dolly to where the regal giant of a cat lay and hefted the gorgeous animal onto it. 

We have been shooing this animal away for several weeks, assuming he was a tom cat looking for trouble.  He was a beauty, long thick orange tabby fur, with a wide Maine Coon face and large, intelligent eyes.  I took advantage of his diminished capacity to resist and made a closer examination of his private parts. 

What I didn't find broke my heart.  He wasn't a tom cat.  He was someone's cherished, neutered pet.  One of my neighbors will be calling him home for dinner, wondering why he doesn't show up.  So, tomorrow I must go door to door, trying to find his staff, to let them know of his fate.  If you've never lost a cat you probably wonder why I would go to such lengths, but if you have, I don't need to explain. 

Years ago, I had a one in a million, Maine Coon tabby named Studley Dude.  This cat was as affectionate as any dog I've ever known.  He would run to greet me when I came home from work, and the moment I set my purse aside, he would leap up and wrap his arms around my neck, bury his face in my hair and purr loudly in my ear.  One day I came home and he wasn't there to greet me.

For three days I searched the neighborhood.  I went door to door asking if anyone had found his body.  I was sick with worry.  My worries were well founded.  We finally found him under the tool bench in the garage where he had crawled after having been hit by a car.  His jaw was broken and he had maggots festering in his wounds.  He was alive but badly dehydrated. 

It was the Fourth of July so the only vet available was the emergency clinic about twenty miles away.  All the way to the clinic, I steeled myself for the vet's determination that he would need to be put down.  In retrospect, it would have been kinder to have put him to sleep, but the emergency vet thought he stood a good good chance of surviving.  He wired the jaw back together and stitched his lower lip back on.  The maggots had eaten away the dead tissue leaving a nice clean wound in his leg that healed without further treatment.  After a day on an IV drip to get him rehydrated he came home to convalesce. 

The recovery was slow and painful and required additional surgery to remove the wires after the jaw healed.  For days I forced broth between his teeth to keep him hydrated until at last he would attempt to drink on his own.  He bravely allowed me to slip antibiotics into his traumatized mouth several times a day for weeks.  Somehow he got through it and instead of hating me for all the torture I had inflicted, he seemed to realize I had helped him and was more attached than ever. 

Studley Dude was never allowed to roam outside without a chaperon again and lived to a ripe old age.  The point of this tale is that the three days of not knowing where he was or what had happened to him were far worse than anything that followed.  I need to find the people who loved the little orange lion and put their mind at peace.   

Sally's eight year old bike is worn out.  She's got about $1,500 saved which would nicely rehab the old Marin or she could buy a new low-end  bike.  Mike offered to help her refurbish the worn bike so I went online in search of a new fork. 

Most of the better front shocks are built for the current generation of bikes which means they no longer have the posts that cantilever brakes mount on.  I guess the manufacturers assume if you're willing to pay over $600 for a fork, you're using disc brakes.  Sally's Marin was state of the art eight years ago but most people weren't using disc brakes in this part of the country at that time.

I found an ad on MTBR for a new shock that had the requisite brake bosses AND it included a really nice head set.  I called the seller to ask some questions and ...that brings me to the point of this post.

The seller's name is Aaron and he's planning a bike trip with his brother traveling from Alaska to Peru in June of 2010.  He has a website up and running on which he intends to post a detailed journal of his trip.  You really must check out this guy's site!  He's at  http://beyondthegreatdivide.org .  What he plans to do seems utterly impossible to me, but he's young and has a skill set that just might see him through.  Is it something about the name "Aaron" that makes a young man a risk taker?  (I'm referring to Aron Ralston of Between a Rock and a Hard Place fame)

The L.A. Times ran an article this weekend about producing oil from shale.  Evidently, there are enormous deposits of shale oil in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, enough it would seem to exceed the known oil fields of Saudi Arabia.  A fact that the folks who are eager to exploit these deposits gloss over, is that there is no proven method of extracting the oil. 

At present the idea for extraction involves heating the shale to 700 degrees fahrenheit which forces the oil (and some other really nasty things like arsenic, cyanide and polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons) out of the crevices in the shale.  The process would use prodigious amounts of water, which is already in desperately short supply in theses states and the states downstream, and would require 14 times more electrical power than is currently produced by the largest power plant in Utah.  The entire concept sounds inefficient at best and disastrous to the water supply at worst.

So, why is the Bush administration encouraging oil companies to forge ahead by allowing new leases on federal land at unusually low royalty rates and by including the industry in the $700-billion government bailout package with investment and tax incentives to help build infrastructure?  Must we turn our country into an industrial wasteland before we curb our insatiable appetite for oil? 

We have already sacrificed many of our young people's lives to wars in the Middle East to insure the flow continues without interruption.  Now our government has decided to burden the ones who stayed at home with a debt so huge their children will still be working to pay it off thirty years from now. 

I've got an idea that, though wildly unpopular, would spur us to find more ways to conserve.  Tax the shit out of it.  Make gas so expensive that we would be forced to drive European style, fuel efficient cars.  Force us out of our cars and onto bikes.  If folks had to propel their own bulk around our health care costs would be reduced as well. 

I realize that giving up our happy lifestyles won't be pleasant.  Heaven knows, I'll miss my camping trips to Utah and my semiannual flights to the family reunion in Michigan and the infrequent trips to Europe, but if it means we will have clean water to drink and to water the garden, it will be worth the sacrifice.

Another fabulous weekend has come and gone leaving us pooped, broke and utterly satiated. 

Friday was spent shopping for a used truck to replace our little 1999 Nissan.  Some guy ran a red light last weekend, ramming a huge luxury car so hard it was shoved into the side of Mike's truck.  Despite the mandatory insurance law in California, he was neither licensed nor insured.  Surprisingly, the driver wasn't hauled off to jail for being a scofflaw, only cited and sent on his irresponsible way.

We splurged and bought a fancy schmancy Toyota Tundra just because it was such a bargain compared to what it had cost its previous owner when it was new.  Mike struggled with the decision because the difference in fuel efficiency between this one and our little Nissan is considerable, but finally rationalized that he doesn't drive enough miles to make much difference.

 
As you can see, it's quite the chick magnet except for the old dude running boards.  He should have less difficulty picking up old babes with these though.

The purchase of this monster truck got me thinking about waste in America.  There has been such an outcry about the folly of the American auto industry and how they have failed to build a line of fuel efficient vehicles.  Even Nissan and Toyota have built ever bigger and more powerful autos (see above photo). 

Why is that?  Is it because, even though the American people are clamoring for smaller, lighter, slower, more efficient cars, they are in cahoots with the oil companies and refuse to provide them to us? 

Seriously, folks, face it.  They build what sells.  We want stupid cars that can go twice as fast as any posted speed limit in the country.  We want trucks that can haul our gas-guzzling motorized toys and "camping" trailers that have all the comforts of home.  We want to drive a four wheel drive Hummer to the grocery store so the Joneses will know we've got money to burn.  So, don't blame Detroit.  Accept the fact that we are to blame. 

There is another form of waste that I don't understand.  (I totally get the aforementioned form of wastefulness)  I call it Cheapskatephobia.  Some people are so concerned about appearing cheap that they deliberately waste precious resources.  On a small scale it's the half eaten dinner, left on the plate, instead of going home in a doggie bag for the next day's breakfast.  On a large scale it's a leased vehicle which costs almost as much to drive for three years as it would cost to purchase it and drive it for a decade.  When you lease a new car every few years you never look cheap (mathematically impaired, perhaps, but not cheap).

And then there are the careless wasters who don't want to be bothered with turning off the unnecessary lights, recycling aluminum cans, or driving carefully to conserve fuel.  It's worth the few cents, dollars, or hundred dollars to not be inconvenienced.

And there are the flagrant consumers who get such a kick out of acquisition that they spend themselves into bankruptcy, buying things on credit that they are bored with long before they have made the final payment.  Their impulse purchases are soon tossed into the landfill, useless to others because of neglect and abuse.  The evening news ran a spot on a woman who was losing her house.  The poor dear had borrowed against every bit of equity that had accrued in her house and spent the money on candles and other trendy decorating items.  She plans to live in her car when she is evicted next week. 

I would venture that everyone in the U.S., even the poorest of the poor, is wasteful by the standards of the poor in third world countries.  The other day I saw a DVD (in my yoga class) about a philanthropist in India who employs people to tear up worn out clothes to make sanitary napkins for rural women who have not even a scrap of cloth to absorb their monthly flow. 

What's the point of this rant on the prodigal American?  Maybe it's only to encourage some introspection.  Even as no man is a villain in his own eyes, so no man sees himself as wasteful.  He may see more frugal people as cheap, but no matter how bad his habits, he knows someone who is more profligate.

It grows increasingly difficult to keep track of the day of the week with nobody in the family working.  One day is much the same as the one before it.  Each day is filled with pleasant tasks, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, attending to the needs of the cats and Mom. 

Other Gray Kitty had something wrong with his eye.  It kept developing big ole' eye goobers which I was cleaning out periodically with cotton swabs.  I finally donned a pair of Mike's super strong old folks' glasses to examine it and discovered he had a cat claw hooked in the inner, lower eye lid.  Cats frequently shed the outer sheath of their claws and it seems that someone had taken a swipe at Other's eye just when the claw was loose enough to be pulled off.  The claw was near the inner corner of his eye and did not appear to be annoying him one bit.  Mike is squeamish about such things and called the vet to see if she would come to remove it, but she wasn't working until after Christmas and suggested we take him to the emergency clinic.  Other is probably our most docile cat so I persuaded Mike that we should attempt to remove it ourselves.  I held Other in my lap, pinning his hind legs with my arm, clasping his front paws in one hand and spreading his eye lids with the other hand, while Mike grasped the claw with a pair of tweezers.  Amazingly, Other held still long enough to get a grip on it and it came out with minimal damage to the inner eye lid.  We praised him for being such a brave boy and gave him a treat. 

This is Other Gray Kitty wearing Mike's pjs.

It's still cold out so I'm looking for excuses to run the oven.  We had garden burgers for dinner with lettuce and tomatoes from the garden.  The tomatoes are lookin' pretty pitiful and the lettuce is not liking all the rain we've been getting either.  Only the sugar snap peas are thriving but not producing because there is no bee activity this time of year.  I resorted to baking an apple pie to warm up the kitchen. 

We're going to be fat as pigs if this weather keeps up!

This past weekend has left me crippled.  On Saturday Sally and I hiked up Mt. Harrison with one of her professors from Cal State SB.  It was a  march up the spine of the mountain to a summit that afforded a view of the valley from the San Gorgonio Pass to Saddleback Mountain in Orange County.  As the crow flies we were maybe a mile from our starting point but the rate of ascent was similar to climbing stairs, 5,400 of them.  Near the top we found untracked snow a foot deep.  Someone had placed an American flag and a plastic box at the unofficial summit with a log book in it for successful climbers to notate the date they had summited this 4,385' peak.  I was astounded to see that people from as far away as Amsterdam had found their way to this insignificant little mound of decomposing granite that straddles one of the longest earthquake faults in California.  Despite Mt. Harrison's diminutive size it does have the distinction of rising out of the valley floor with no foothills before it to diminish its grandeur. 

After a brief rest at the top we retraced our steps.  The muscles that had lifted us so valiantly to the top were now asked to lower us at a safe rate of speed.  The tug of war between gravity and our fatigued leg muscles was a battle that will not soon be forgotten.  It's a tricky thing to find one's way off a mountain because, while there is only one summit, there are many ridges that lead back to the valley.  At one point we thought we had drifted too far to the west so we scrambled across a small ravine only to decide that we needed to be back on the other side after we had descended to a point that the small ravine was now a deep one.  Slip sliding down into the gully I lost my footing and fell into a sharp yucca that pierced right through my leather padded gloves.  Ouch!  Thankfully, my knees were hurting badly enough that the stabbing pain in my hand seemed minor by comparison.  We eventually got ourselves back on track and hobbled home.

When I got home Mike informed me that the guys we had met on the trail a couple of weeks ago had invited us to ride with them on Sunday.  I doubted that I'd be able to walk by then but agreed to go anyway. 

Here's Aaron, whom I called Chris for the duration of the ride, laboring towards Crafton Hills College.  The rest of the guys can be seen waiting at the top of the ridge.  I have a video of the boys but it won't upload.  Xanga intimates it's due to a limitation of my DSL connection.  I'm skeptical.

Mike and I met Victor, Aaron and Chris at the end of Salic Ave. where we came to a consensus on the ride route.  Crafton Hills to Roller Coaster it was. 

If you've read my previous blogs about Roller Coaster, I needn't describe it to you.  Roller Coaster is an E ticket ride when the traction is ideal.  On this day conditions were NOT ideal.  The melting snow had made a slimy, rutted quagmire out of the first descent and Victor nearly went over the bars sliding down the track with one foot off the pedal.  Aaron was riding a bike with toe clips instead of the easy-exit clipless pedals we use and I didn't dare to watch him attempt it so I went ahead of him.  I wish the guys had allowed me to take more photos but they were having too much fun to wait for the photographer. 

I guess Victor crashed once but I was too far off the back to witness the spectacle.  Mike wrecked at the bottom of the last steep decent in a rocky stream bed and bruised his butt but his bike was undamaged.  I rode at my careful, sedate pace and arrived home with the least amount of mud on my backside of anyone.  I sure wish I had some girls to ride with, these guys are tough to hang with.

It's funny how we Southern Californians forget what winter is like.  When the summer heat finally wanes and the more moderate temperatures of fall take their place, we breathe a sigh of relief.  Then when the thermometer plummets again, to sixty, then fifty degrees, we fail to properly appreciate just how cold that is when magnified by the force of a twenty mile per hour wind.

Mike and I set off on our bikes around 1:00.  The sun was high and in the sheltered area of the driveway beside the south side of the house, it felt pretty comfortable in our thin lycra tights and light wind breakers.  Our helmets and shoes, both designed for maximum air flow, provide precious little protection from the chilling wind.  By the time we had rolled down the driveway into the street we realized we were underdressed but were still unable to believe it could possibly be that COLD.  We figured we would be warmed by the climb soon enough and be ready to shed our jackets.  And indeed, within a mile or two we were comfortable.  We never got warm enough to pull off our jackets but did get sweaty enough to soak our jerseys.

About half way to the top we met a couple on bikes who appeared to be new to the sport.  We stopped to chat them up and invite them to join our group rides in the future and by the time we moved on, we were again pretty chilly.  Fortunately, the trail was steep and we soon had mustered up enough body heat for comfort.  At the top, we swapped wet jerseys for dry shirts, added a pair of dry socks and donned dry gloves for the brisk descent back home.  By this time, the sun was low on the horizon and the mercury was sinking like keys gone overboard. 

We found that the deep shadows made it difficult to see the trail where it turned directly into the sun but we were reluctant to slow our pace because exertion was our only defense against the frigid air that robbed us of our hard earned warmth.  As our fingers and toes grew stiff then numb, it became increasingly difficult to shift and brake smoothly.  Conversation came out in a drunken slur as our lips became paralyzed. 

On one of the mostly straight sections of trail, I pedaled for all I was worth (not much at this stage) not knowing or caring whether the I was generating more heat than I was losing to wind chill.  I just wanted this ride to end as quickly as possible.  The poor light posed little danger because here the trail is not usually rutted.  However, I had forgotten that we had found on the way up, that the recent showers had eroded a new, rather deep, narrow rut that zig zagged right down the center of the track.  By the time I realized what the dark widening ribbon ahead was, it was too late to amend my flight plan.  I had come in just to the left of the rut but it snaked into my path which meant I was going to plunge into it at a very high rate of speed.  It's always amazing to me how the instinct for self preservation takes control at times like this.  The side of my brain that does the talking shut up and the side that does the riding took charge.  My riding brain works in concert with my body far more effectively than my talking brain, because my talking brain would have been screaming hysterically, "You idiot!  You're going to kill us both!"  Thankfully my riding brain thought light, lifted the front wheel, and eased the bike to the right, ever so slightly, to hop across the rut at an angle.  It could have gone either way, a garage sale wreck or a perfect landing, it's the luck of the draw.   

Having cleared the rut I thought briefly of stopping to warn Mike of the danger (he was behind me, having taken a little extra loop of the trail), then considered posing in a crumpled position in the rut so he would think I'd crashed (how sick is that!), but shook off the idea and continued down the trail.  After all, when it comes right down to it, we're all in this alone.  Mountain biking ain't no team sport, baby.

By the time I reached the concrete bridge above Garnet Ave., he'd caught up with me.  I asked him if he had remembered the rut and he said no but he'd seen it in time to avoid it.  Whew!  I'd have felt bad if he'd fallen.  At Garnet we ran into Aaron, a guy we used to ride with.  He had ridden up Crafton Hills, which is a few hundred feet above the valley, and had found snow in the shaded areas.  He too was frozen stiff.

We made it home on what felt like frozen lumps instead of feet and made a beeline for the bathroom with the heated marble floor and the shower built for two.  It took the entire contents of the water heater to return our purple toenails to their normal shade of pink.

Cycling gear lays where it fell when I jumped into the shower.  Butchie, the cat on the right is waiting for someone to replace the empty toilet paper roll (in the background) so she can unroll it.

This is our shower built for two.  Mike built this bathroom from the studs out including the walnut counter top and back splash.  The walls shown are yellow onyx.

Sally and I rode the wash singletracks again for the 1,275,576th time, just the two of us, jabbering like a couple of hens all the way up.  She was whining about the pace because I hadn't ridden in a week and she had done some form of strenuous exercise everyday for the past thirty-five years in a row.  Wa, wa, sometimes she's such a big baby. 

Here she sits, refusing to ride any further without peanut M&Ms. 

It was overcast and the trails still had good traction from the rain last week.  There were a couple of guys unloading bikes from their vehicles at the turnout at Fish Hatchery Road so we stopped to chat them up.  They were preparing to do a shuttle ride from the base of Morton Peak but their shuttle vehicle had missed the rendezvous so they were waiting for its return.   Turns out, one of them had ridden with our group a few times about 10 years ago and remembered me.  He had been witness to one of my most dramatic wrecks, the one where I splattered myself on the pavement of Sunset Drive at the bottom of a short, steep drop off. 

This shot of Morton Peak was taken shortly after the fire roared through a couple of years ago.  It hasn't recovered much in the ensuing two years of drought.

So we continued climbing up John's North trail, enjoying the serene scenery, when our reverie was rudely interrupted by the reverberations of a rifle shot!  It sounded disturbingly close but, as the trail meanders through tall brush we couldn't see more than a few yards away.  There was nothing to be done but continue riding up the trail and hope the reckless shooters weren't completely stupid.  When we got to the top of the trail we could see a pick up truck on Poles Road at the levy where we normally stop to rest.  There were two people with rifles, firing from the road, in the direction of the trail we had just ridden. 

So, here's the dilemma:  Do we ride down and ask them to kindly refrain from endangering the lives of bikers and hikers, hoping they are peace loving, reasonable, but somewhat thoughtless, naughty boys; or do we avoid confrontation and try to quickly slip past them on an alternate trail?  Long we stood, assessing the situation at a distance.  Eventually, our scrutiny must have registered because they soon put their weapons into cases and put them into the truck.  By the time we rode the single track that runs parallel to Poles Road down to where they had been parked, they had skedaddled up Poles and down the highway, obviously wanting to avoid identification.  Not so dumb after all.

We scampered down Burien's Trail feeling invincible, having cheated death yet again.  The traction was sweet and my bike handled like an expensive sports car on a winding mountain road.  Half way home, I felt a drop of rain hit my upper lip.  Within minutes it started coming down in a gentle half hearted way that urged us to pick up the pace but didn't soak us to the skin.  Before we reached the pavement at Madiera it had stopped entirely. 

Turning onto Malachite, we were accosted by a small dog and only a few yards further a larger dog threatened to taste our lycra clad thighs.  His owner, standing across the street, reassured us that he wouldn't bite and we assured him that his dog would probably not be mortally injured if he did.  He seemed a bit taken aback by the idea that we might feel entitled to defend ourselves.  Thankfully, my stern command (to the dog) was enough to make the dog think better of his plan to assert himself. 

Such are the dangers of mountain biking.

This is the time of year when my Christian friends take pleasure in inflicting sentimental stories on me, like the one of the single mom struggling to put food on the table for her 15 kids, whose abusive husband finally abandoned them after years of knocking her up and around.  This story tells how, in answer to her prayers, friends and neighbors come to the rescue with Christmas presents of food, clothing and even toys, eliciting a tear from jaded, cynical, hardhearted ole me.  Now please don't misunderstand, I really like these tear jerker tales that send mascara streaming down my cheeks.  I'm as maudlin as the next person but what I find objectionable, is that they inevitably credit prayer for the kindness and generosity of her benefactors.  These stories ignore the fact that people help people regardless of their relationship with a deity.  The tale implies that only people who believe in prayer (and of course, God) can hope for unsolicited help from friends and strangers.  I would go so far as to infer that unbelievers would not be moved by her plight and stand by all Scrooge-like, while the Christians dig deep in their pockets.  Without you (and the twenty people to whom you are entreated to forward the story) lobbying God on her behalf, this poor woman and her passel of brats might go without a proper Christmas.   

These stories, as heart warming as they may be, do an injustice to all decent people.  The human capacity for goodness is not limited to those who profess to be Christian.  In my life I have known Christians, Jews, agnostics and atheists and not a single one of them would let their neighbor go hungry.  So, dear friends, please continue to send me the sappy stories of the season but don't expect me to forward requests for prayer.  The only prayer I know that is efficacious is "Thy will be done" or "Allah akbar" neither of which provide material goods to the downtrodden.  

Best wishes for a holiday season filled with the love of family and friends.

I read that Xanga was originally created as a place for people to blog about the books they were reading.  That surprised me because almost nobody posts anything about books.  They frequently post things about other blogs they're reading but rarely books.  A couple of my subscriptions post what music they are listening to but still, no books.  Does anyone make time to read full length books anymore? 

Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, interviews almost anyone who writes a book from Richard Balzar to Jimmy Carter (I still feel funny calling a former U.S. president Jimmy).  Who is reading these weighty tomes?  Hello, anyone out there?